Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Tuesday September 17, 2013 @08:04AM
from the sued-the-wrong-guy dept.

New submitter kintamanimatt writes with news that someone other than newegg is fighting back against patent trolls, despite the business case for settling. This time, however, one of the founders of the Doubleclick ad network has decided to use his personal money to not only fight a patent troll attacking his new startup, but to strike back at them under the RICO act. "'There's a lot of outrageous stories, but everyone's so damn afraid of coming forward — It's like going against the Mafia,' he [Kevin O'Connor] said. But the idea that trolls may retaliate against those who speak out is overblown, he thinks. 'If they want to try to teach me a lesson, go for it. This will be my retirement. I'll fight them.' The patent troll's attorney also made the claim that calling someone a 'patent troll' was actually a 'hate crime' under 'Ninth Circuit precedent' and threatened to file criminal charges — unless they settled the civil case immediately, apologized, and gave financial compensation to the troll. The offer was 'good until close of business that day.'"

It's apparent that the whole patent system is in dire need of an overhaul. The question is who will finally step up in the government to fix this mess.. It's something I hear of almost daily (patent trolls killing off innovation and screwing people out of money).

The double-click ads never land on my systems. I use a hosts file to block their stuff along with other ads. I did some searching around and found a few places which provide hots files which you can use on your computers. Here's a great site which maintains a hosts file which you can use in your computers.. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm [mvps.org]

The notion that the patent system is decent and necessary but somewhat out of control is totally bogus. It's working precisely as intended. Patent law was built by patent trolls, run by patent trolls, and exists thanks to patent trolls. Aka patent attorneys and speculators and companies with no other way to make a profit.

Mafia is right. Comparisons to slavery are right. "A limited slavery system is good for the economy". Hogwash. Abolition is the

Well if ones creations are not protected the group that invests (often large amounts of) money in creating something new and unique then Joe Schmuck will purchase the product when it is first available then copy it and sell it (usually cheaper) and the creator is then unable to recoup their development costs. This the discourages the creation and money put into creating new things.

That being said:1) Patent times are FAR too long in many cases and should not be renewable.2) Minor minor changes to the origin

Curiously enough, some of the points made by 'anon' in the parent post here used to be part of some patent law systems in really ancient times (like 16th-18th centuries), but they were one by one abandoned, by court decisions or legislative amendments:

>> 1) Patent times are FAR too long in many cases and should not be renewable.

An early example of a time limit, fixed in 1623 in England, was 14 years from a really early time-point when patent grant took place -- which used to be almost immediately on application (compared with today's long process).

>> 2) Minor minor changes to the original patent should not result in a new patent.

One of the very early judges (even 16th century) said that small improvements were only like "a new button on an old coat" and refused to uphold the patent, setting a precedent that lasted a couple hundred years till overturned.

>> 3) Patents should only be issues where there is an actual product... not a process.

Definition of invention used to be 'manner of new manufacture' in several countries, but that's gone now pretty much everywhere.

>> 4) Software falls under copyright and trademark laws and therefore patents do not apply.

The old definition (see 3) automatically excluded this kind of thing from patenting.

>> 5) If you have not created and sold a product to the public using said patent within 2 years of filing then you loose ALL rights to it.

For many decades (during the 19th & 20th c. in many countries, but not including US, I think) the patentee's failure to make & sell the invention used to be called an 'abuse of monopoly', it enabled others to claim the grant of (royalty-bearing) licenses by right, and it could also expose the patent to a risk of cancellation. So there was a way to achieve no exclusion from a patented invention if the patent holder wasn't doing anything about it.

it's of interest to ask 'who lobbied' for all of the changes that got rid of these old safeguards.

Well if ones creations are not protected the group that invests (often large amounts of) money in creating something new and unique then Joe Schmuck will purchase the product when it is first available then copy it and sell it (usually cheaper) and the creator is then unable to recoup their development costs. This the discourages the creation and money put into creating new things.

This is a good summary of the arguments for the benefits of patents. However, the same reasoning applies to software patents:

Well if one's software is not protected: the group invests (often large amounts of) money in creating new and unique software, then Joe Schmuck will reverse-engineer the software when it is first available, then write similar software and sell it (usually cheaper) and the creator is then unable to recoup their development costs. This discourages the creation and money put into creating new software.

So I'm not sure how you get

4) Software falls under copyright and trademark laws and therefore patents do not apply.

I'm not saying whether we should have software patents or not, but the fact is that a lot of the same reasoning applies. Also, it's worth considering that perhaps the design of the system is fine, but the implementation is terrible. I believe that a significant part of the problem is that the patent office has a tendency to rubber-stamp every broad, vague

Yup, I block a lot of ads too. But the whole patent troll issue needs to be resolved. It's not like it's not clearly visible at this point in the game. But it's ridiculous - in essence the trolls are putting additional meaning into the patents they hold. It shouldn't work like that.

this should be the quote of the day, probably one of the most ridiculous statements I have read in awhile!! not only do they rip off anyone and everyone but they waste the courts time with absurd charges, or the courts are stupid enough to take on such cases.

They need a think tank to create new laws or use current laws to put the hammer down on these trolls!!

err you have missed an update since i did state that ABP works in Chrome and MSIE (and android) since google has no way of controlling the filter lists yes it does in fact block Google Ads.

oh and since most folks will be using a browser from the Gecko/Chrome/IE families it does not matter that a bunch of browsers that may together be ?percent of the "market" are not supported (oh i forgot Opera is supported).

its kind of hard to be mobile when you have to lug around another system to run your adblock filter

If they want us to look so bad, perhaps they shouldn't use flash ads that obscure content and other tricks to get clicks fraudulently. I only have a 5mbps connection and a lot of those ads are so corpulent that it slows down what should be a quickly loading site.

They don't need the little bit of money my eyeball impressions make em because I never click on the ads anyhow and that's without ABP installed in Firefox. They don't need the little bit of money my eyeball impressions make em because I never click on the ads anyhow and that's without ABP installed in Firefox.

The way most advertising works by selling eyeballs, not click throughs. So you not viewing the ads may not have a giant effect on the site, but it ads up. I think an interesting idea, for sites which subsist on advertising alone, is to simply have a pay option where you can pay to not see the ads and not be bothered by anything (something reasonable like) and you'll have the satisfaction of supporting something you value.

As to finding products I wasn't aware of previously? That's what in hell Google is for.

A product listing IS an advertisement and the fact that you came across it shows the ef

Remembering back to before ads...I'm not sure it would be worse, just because it was different.

It's true that in the early days there wasn't nearly as much on the internet, but in the first place that wasn't all bad, and in the second place, anything that people were interested in tended to show up.

And in the third place, ads hosted on the site, rather than distributed, tend to be much more accountable. (If the ads are too annoying, the site dies.)

So your position is that it's better to not fight such extortion schemes? Because then the only victims are still going to be the consumers who are going to pay the patent trolls through increased prices. And since nobody fights back (your policy), more trolls will come to the easy money feast. And that is better how?

So your position is that it's better to not fight such extortion schemes?

That's not how I read OP. I read it as a roundabout way of saying that we've reached them point where... "extrajudicial" justice would be more cost-effective than seeking justice through the court system.

Sounds nice. If that would hold water, what you need to do is always go after the lawyers. That way if you have enough money, there will be nobody to defend the other party, so you start to win even easier.

Imagine if the MAFIAA would start doing that Or the patent trolls themselves.

When you start thinking, instead of reacting, you will see that this would be a very bad idea.

The impression I get is that a lot of lawyers hate these guys as much as we do. Even evil has standards:) But more to the point, they do consider themselves to be respectable professionals and don't like their reputation to be dragged through the mud to obviously.

And how they track and use the data they accumulate.But they are a far more benign cancer and in fact do help pay for the intarwebs as we know it.

Patent trolls, on the other hand, do absolutely nothing positive for technology, the internet or the world and no, they do not protect inventors.Patent trolls are an extremely malignant force and raise the cost of doing business for legitimate companies tremendously.

Doubleclick= annoying.Patent trolls= criminal.

I am amazed that anyone with the capacity to use the internet states that they believe otherwise.

The worst criminals have always had the law on their side - From the landed nobles of Old Europe, to the "robber barons" of the late 19th / early 20th centuries, to patent trolls and the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA today.

That is VERY debatable. In many cases they arguably are committing one or more of: extortion, barratry and/or racketeering. In many/most cases they are simply creating nuisance lawsuits in the hopes of coercing a settlement without any actual time in court. What they are doing is functionally the equivalent of some thug going into a retail store and saying "nice store - shame if anything bad would happen to it". Technically saying that is legal but in reality they are committing a crime. Patent trolls are really no different.

Based on wikipedia's defintion, "A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist." I think he might have a point.

Of course the legalities are probably more complicated than this, but from my layman's perspective I'd say he has a good chance.

You made a whole bunch of assumptions with that start. If the patent isn't for something obvious, perhaps so obvious that no investment at all was required to develop it, and if it wasn't actually someone else's invention and investment for which the patent holder did not pay, and if it doesn't cover something that shouldn't be patentable at all, such as a mathematical formula or other fact of nature, and if the patent isn't overly broad, and if there isn't prior art, then perhaps "earning back your invest

Okay, the headline was somewhat misleading, but does anyone on this site even read the summary anymore, or have we devolved to commenting based only on the headlines?

This time, however, one of the founders of the Doubleclick ad network has decided to use his personal money to not only fight a patent troll attacking his new startup

Half the posts here are about whether Doubleclick is the lesser of the two evils, but the guy doesn't work at Doubleclick any more, and Doubleclick isn't involved in the lawsuit in any way shape or form. This is like saying "Yay Paypal" because of what Elon Musk is doing with Space-X.

So a guy who got rich by assuming illegitimate rights over peoples personal info, is mad that another entity is trying to get rich by assuming illegitimate rights over a process that appears to sell that personal info. Mafioso's all around.

... Or use Adblock, or add "127.0.0.1...doubleclick.net" to hosts (lot of work for all subdomains, wildcards not supported), or use "squid" with a blacklist for ad-domains, or use any other solution that suits you better...

I'm very well aware of all the methods to avoid doubleclick (and similar hosts). The reason for my comment as that some people get very self righteous about advert companies tracking them, but still are quite happy to frequent the sites that utilise their services.

For the record, I only use FlashBlock (to avoid fast moving annoying graphics) and I browse Slashdot with the ads even though I'm given the option switch them off. Why, because I know who pays their bills. You can argue that I've sold my privacy i

Try and step away from the personalities involved for a moment. In this particular situation who is in the right, and who is the scum-bag criminal?

Personally I hope the patent troll gets pummelled into a greasy spot on the courtroom floor, and a precedent is set that applies for all other patent trolls. So, uncharacteristically, I'm rooting for doubleclick.

DoubleClick, owned by Google, is not a party to this lawsuit. This is a suit between FindTheBest and apparently something called Lumen View. FindTheBest's CEO's old company has nothing to do with this.

There are a variety of copyright troll cases that are in the works now where the plaintiffs have either had to pay legal fees for the defense or post bond in case they lose. In the former case, $20-50k in defense fees have been awarded before the case even went to trial. Other cases bonds of $250k were asked for. And these are for "simple" copyright infringement cases, not a patent fight.

Troll cases usually are calculated to cost more than what is a trivial amount, but less than what it will cost to defen

There are a variety of copyright troll cases that are in the works now where the plaintiffs have either had to pay legal fees for the defense or post bond in case they lose. In the former case, $20-50k in defense fees have been awarded before the case even went to trial. Other cases bonds of $250k were asked for. And these are for "simple" copyright infringement cases, not a patent fight.

Yes, but I'd take those with a grain of salt - specifically, the Prenda copyright cases had bonds and sanctions with payment to the defense attorneys because of some truly outrageous behavior, including fraud on the court, forged signatures, etc. The Righthaven cases had an issue where Righthaven didn't actually own the copyrights they claimed to be asserting. There are tons of other copyright cases that haven't required anything of the sort - see, for example, the Jammie Thomas and Joel Tenenbaum RIAA case

This is a strong arm tactic commonly used by criminals. It is done by the mafia, it is done by prison gangs. Of course it is not without precedent in the economy. For example, in the music/entertainment world aggressive lawyers have long beaten down artists. All those nice office buildings around the West Hollywood and Beverly Hills area are full of lawyers. Another example, I once had a rug cleaning guy, who was really a lawyer, come into my apartment to clean a rug. After I signed his work order and he immediately started to threaten to take me to court unless I paid $400 (which was 1000% the cost of the cleaning). Being an athletic lady I snatched the work order out of his hands, shredded it, and flushed it down the toilet. I then threatened to scream "rape". Anyways, the point is it is not good enough to just have computer skills to become an internet entrepreneur, you need some well rounded skills such a law. In Babson College's entrepreneurial program they require students take a law courses since they know starting a business is full of legal landmines and shakedowns. Also be ready to kick a bully in the gonads.

You are precisely correct. What you say was part of their scam. I sense their's was a technique tailored to females alone in apartments who would be intimidated, then he'd disappear. He did not anticipate there'd be a sharp bone in his fish that day. I'm a 5'10'' rugby and ice hockey player with a black belt in Kempo. And I always keep a knife down the base of my back when a service man is in my flat. I wasn't intimidated. Then I had one of our doormen (porter) escort him out of the building since, as you say, I was concerned he'd slip away and try it again on one of our neighbors. The doorman then notified the other building doormen on my section of Park Ave (Manhattan). Personally, I'm thrilled to go bare-knuckled w/scam artist and trolls. I advocate others to kick some butt too!

The patent troll's attorney also made the claim that calling someone a 'patent troll' was actually a 'hate crime' under 'Ninth Circuit precedent' and threatened to file criminal charges — unless they settled the civil case immediately, apologized, and gave financial compensation to the troll.

"Subsequently, the patent troll crouched on his hands and knees behind O'Conner's legs. The attorney then shoved Mr. O'Conner, who fell backwards over the patent troll. Then the attorney climbed atop Mr. O'Conner's chest, took hold of each of his wrists and forced Mr. O'Conner to strike himself about the head and shoulders, all the while screaming, "Stop hittin' yourself, O'Conner! Stop hittin' yourself!""

Hate speech is not a crime in the United States. You are free to express all the hatred that you want. Some schools have administrative penalties for hate speech, but the courts have thrown out many of those policies. Suing for hate speech makes about as much sense as trying to apply RICO to completely legal activities. There is silliness from both sides here.

Suing for hate speech makes about as much sense as trying to apply RICO to completely legal activities.

Extortion [wikipedia.org] is not a "completely legal activity". Furthermore neither is barratry [wikipedia.org] and racketeering [wikipedia.org], both of which arguably apply in the case of patent trolls.

Suing for hate speech makes about as much sense as trying to apply RICO to completely legal activities.

Extortion [wikipedia.org] is not a "completely legal activity". Furthermore neither is barratry [wikipedia.org] and racketeering [wikipedia.org], both of which arguably apply in the case of patent trolls.

No, none of the above apply. They own the patents in question, and if there's any reasonable argument that the defendant infringes, even if you have to make a bunch of factual assumptions in favor of the plaintiff (those factual assumptions would be resolved at trial by the jury), then the suit isn't groundless. If the suit is not groundless, then it's not barratry. Offering to settle a suit that's not groundless is not extortion. And finally, with no underlying extortion, it's not racketeering.

Also, the source of this whole patent problem is that they created a pro-patent court to hear all patent cases. So I don't see how more litigation is going to solve it. Revolutionary legislation is needed (which is practically an oxymoron).

Judges determine what is or isn't valid from a strictly legal perspective. Juries determine facts.

Patent cases often involve rulings on legal points, and if a ruling goes against a plaintiff they may no longer have a case to take to a jury. Similarly, if a ruling goes against the defendant, the parties to a case may then agree to settle rather than take a case to trial. But if a plaintiff has grounds to sue, and the defendant is not willing to settle, then only a jury can say "Yes they infringed" or "No

Simple ownership of the patent is not enough. If you sue everyone and his goat using an unreasonably broad interpretation of the patent and carefully tailor the amount to be under the cost to successfully defend, you may well run afoul of a number of laws.

Simple ownership of the patent is not enough. If you sue everyone and his goat using an unreasonably broad interpretation of the patent and carefully tailor the amount to be under the cost to successfully defend, you may well run afoul of a number of laws.

Not sure why both you and another poster misread my post, but with 2 vs. 1, I have to assume the misstatement was on my part. Allow me to attempt it again:

They own the patents in question, and if there's any reasonable argument that the defendant infringes, even if you have to make a bunch of factual assumptions in favor of the plaintiff (those factual assumptions would be resolved at trial by the jury), then the suit isn't groundless.

My reference to ownership is because, with regard to the recent Righthaven copyright infringement, it did appear that the defendants infringed the copyrights... but Righthaven didn't own them, so when they brought suit, it was per se frivolous. You have to own the IP rights and have a reasonable argument for infringement... but if you do, then it's not a

Righthaven was one example, but there are other ways one can be guilty of extortion or barratry even while actually owning the IP in question. For example if you read TFA you'd know that the plaintiff threatened criminal charges (for calling plaintiff a troll, no less) unless defendant settled immediately. Then there are the many patent cases where there is no REASONABLE argument for infringement. For example, the case in TFA is only true if every job match and dating service ever (even back in the days whe

If somebody refuses to give me something I need unless I pay him money, is that extortion? There's a difference between "That prescription will cost you $400 a month" and "I'll break your kneecaps unless you give me $100 a week", even if I need the prescription more than I need kneecaps. Unions don't threaten to destroy things, they withhold what they're selling (labor) unless they get a price and conditions they find acceptable.